* * *

The queen is restless at the Palace of Placentia, though the household is confident and busy, waiting for news of the king’s success with his hand-picked council. The gardens that run down to the river are beautiful with the white and pale pink of dancing cherry blossom, and when we walk to the river in a wind the petals whirl about us like snow and make the little prince laugh, and he chases after them, his nursemaid bowed over him as he wobbles on his fat little legs. In the fields at the riverside the late daffodils are still bobbing their butter-yellow heads and the hedges of the meadows are burnished white with flowers, the blackthorn thickly blooming on black spikes, the hawthorn a budding green of promise. At the riverside the willows rustle their boughs together and lean over the clear water, green water below reflecting the green leaves above.

In the chapel we are still saying prayers for the health of the king and giving thanks for his recovery. But nothing cheers the queen. She cannot forget that she was imprisoned by the lords of her own country, forced to wait on a sleeping husband, fearful that she would never be free again. She cannot forgive Richard, Duke of York, for the humiliation. She cannot be happy when the only man who stood by her in those hard months, enduring captivity as she did, has marched away again, to meet their enemy. She does not doubt that he will be victorious; but she cannot be happy without him.

Margaret shudders as she comes into her apartments, though there is a good fire in the grate, bright tapestries on the walls, and the last rays of the sun are warming the pretty rooms. ‘I wish they had not gone,’ she says. ‘I wish they had summoned the Duke of York to London to answer us there.’

I don’t remind her that York is a great favourite in London; the guilds and the merchants trust his calm common sense, and flourished when he established peace and good order in the city and country. While the duke was lord protector the tradesmen could send their goods out along the safe roads, and taxes were reduced with the profligate royal household under his control. ‘They’ll be back soon,’ I say. ‘Perhaps York will plead for forgiveness as he did before, and they will all come back soon.’

Her uneasiness affects everyone. We dine in the queen’s rooms, not in the great hall, where the men at arms and the men of the household grumble that there is no cheer, even though the king has recovered. They say that the court is not how it should be. It is too silent, it is like an enchanted castle under a spell of quietness. The queen ignores the criticism. She summons musicians to play only to her, in her rooms, and the younger ladies dance but they only go through the paces without the handsome young men of the king’s retinue to watch them. Finally, she commands one of the ladies in waiting to read to us from a romance, and we sit and sew and listen to a story about a queen who longed for a child in midwinter, and gave birth to a baby who was made entirely of snow. When the child grew to manhood, her husband took him on crusade, and he melted away into the hot sand, poor boy; and then they had no son, not even one made of ice.